Georgetown Law Library Blog

Category Archives: Government Information

Looking for the most authoritative source for presidential documents? Googling does not work. You should only cite to the Federal Register or the Code of Federal Regulations, not Whitehouse.gov or some other web site. Georgetown’s research guide on Presidential Documents provides direct links to the Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, as well as links to historical versions of these authoritative sources.

Congressional Research Service recently released a new report on Women in Congress from 1917 to the present. It includes biographical information, as well as committee assignments and listings by state and Congress.

Ever want to compare population, church membership, higher education enrollments or crime rates across time? The Statistical Abstracts of the U.S. is now online and searchable. Data begins with the 1878 edition of the publication and includes data through the 2016 issue. You can select a single year or search across multiple issues to find statistical data on the United States.

The Judicial appointment process can be confusing at best, but a recent Congressional Research Service report explains the process in detail. It focuses on U.S. Circuit and District court appointments and clarifies the role of the President and the Senate in this process.

Congress.gov has replaced Thomas.gov as the go to resource for “searchable access to bill status and summary, bill text, the Congressional Record, Congressional Record Index and committee reports, and executive actions such as nominations, treaties and communications, with historic access reaching back as far as 1973”.

Consequently, Thomas.gov will be retired on July 5th and no longer accessible. Ask a reference librarian if you have any questions about Congress.gov.

The U.S. Government Publishing Office recently introduced their replacement to FDSys.gov. Govinfo.gov provides access to the U.S. Code, Congressional bills, hearings, committee reports, court decisions, the Federal Register, CFR and many more government publications.

You can search in the Google like box and then use the facets to find your results. Alternatively, you can choose a category to search, limiting your search to just bills, or just regulatory documents, etc. If you are only looking for documents from a specific Congressional committee, you can choose that selection.

Govinfo.gov is currently in beta, so feel free to share suggestions with the U.S. GPO for further improvements. Georgetown Law Library’s research guides are being updated to include this new website and phase out FDSys.gov. Please ask a reference librarian if you have any questions about the new site for U.S. government information.

The Presidential budget for 2017 was recently released on Govinfo.gov, the new platform for all info from the U.S. Government Publishing Office. The full report is available to download as a PDF. Analytical Perspectives and the Appendix, as well as other sections must be downloaded separately. For more information on the President’s Budget Process, feel free to check out the National Conference of State Legislature’s page on the topic.

Historically, each year on the last day of the year, the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court releases a year end report highlighting the case load of the federal courts. Chief Justice Robert’s report can be found here. While the workload of the court can be found in the Appendix of the report, this year’s report also focuses on the changes to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure which took occurred in 2015.

While in law school, students can access CRS Reports from a number of our subscription databases, with ProQuest Congressional being the most popular, but once out in the real world, you might need to access these policy reports for free. CRSReports.com now makes that available.

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) performs public policy research directly for Members of Congress and Congressional Committees, but their reports are not made directly available to members of the public as a matter of policy. That is no longer the case with the new website of CRSReports.com.